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Lessons management
Lessons Management supports evidence-based learning from exercises and emergencies, to continually improve the emergency response and wider civil contingencies resilience capabilities.
Overview and approach to Lessons Management
The importance of learning lessons in the civil contingencies resilience context is reflected in legislation, national standards, and good practice guidance across sectors and stakeholders. It is here that the effective management of lessons can play a vital role in continually improving the emergency response, preventing the repetition of past mistakes, and reducing losses in the event of disruption.
Lesson Management refers to a strategic, organised approach to, and oversight of, planned processes and procedures to achieve evidenced learning from experience, in a continual, consistent manner. At the UKRA we champion leading practices in the management of lessons, from evidence-based identification through to the strategic implementation and embedding of change.
We believe that effective learning management is one of the keys to strategic prevention, with the ability to drive timely, continual improvements in all aspects of integrated emergency management.
ResilienceDirect the UK’s secure web platform for exercising, planning, response and recovery.
The Lessons Management Best Practice Guidance (2024) anchors learning from exercises and emergencies into the three core principles of the Resilience Framework.
Building on leading practices in the UK and beyond, the purpose of the guidance is to inform, encourage, and equip senior leaders, central government departments, agencies, arms-length bodies, and wider resilience professionals in the effective management of lessons.
The guidance has been designed to complement existing learning activities. It is to be used in conjunction with established lessons platforms, such as JESIP’s Joint Organisational Learning Online platform , to support continual improvement at national and local levels.
The Lessons Management Framework comprises four key processes that are required for successfully closing the loop between identifying an area for improvement (lesson identified) and achieving lasting, practical improvements in response.
Lessons Management Framework
The Lessons Management Framework has been designed with flexibility in mind. It can be applied or adapted to inform learning arrangements within and across difference resilience contexts. It can also be used to support wider preparedness goals, strengthen organisational resilience and continually improve crisis incident management.
Each of the four processes in the Lessons Management Framework have been broken down into practical steps. The four key processes are below, and print-friendly ‘Aide Memoires’ that visualise each of the processes and their practical steps can be found in Annex 7 of the Lessons Management Best Practice Guidance – Annexes.
- Lesson Identification
- Lesson Prioritisation
- Lesson Implementation
- Embedding Learning and Change
Here are some helpful resources to aid you in your Lessons Management
Joint Organisational Learning
JOL (Joint Organisational Learning) Online, which is hosted on Resilience Direct, is the national repository for interoperability, national resilience lessons and notable practice across the UK.
Lessons Management Best Practice Guidance
Guidance for the identification, prioritsation, implementation, and embedding of lessons from exercises and emergencies